"I hope, sir, that everything may—may come out right."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Why, I hope that you may forgive him. I don't think that he's dishonest at heart."
"Then you are a fool."
"I admit that, Judge. I am a fool, an infamous fool."
"But you are not a scoundrel, not a thief."
"I might be worse."
"Enough of that. You are trying to debase yourself to raise him. Don't do it. You can't afford it. You have an honest living to make, and through you I must now look to the future." He turned away, and for a time walked up and down in silence; then, coming back, resumed his place in front of Bodney. "It all comes from my over-confidence in modern civilization. I did not presume to instruct or even advise him as to a course of reading, permitting him to exercise his own fancy; and it led him to that running sore on the face of the earth—Paris. He read French books, the germs thrown off by diseased minds. He lived in a literary pest house, and how could he come out clean? He was prepared for any enormity against nature, and why then should he have drawn the line between me and any of his desires?" He turned away, walking up and down, sometimes rubbing his hands together, as if washing them, then putting them behind him; halting at the desk to gaze down at something; going once to the safe and putting his hand upon it, but snatching it away as if the iron were hot. Bodney followed him about with his eyes, seeing him through cards, hearts and spades. His mind flew back to the game, and he could see the players sitting just as he had left them, the offensive fellow and the regular, behind a redoubt of chips. Only ten dollars more would have saved him; he had fancied so before, but now it was not fancy but almost a perfect knowledge. Why had he not asked the preacher for twenty instead of ten?
"'But it is so strange," said the old man, sitting down with one arm straight out upon the green baize table; and the wretch with his mind on the game thought that it would be but an ungainly position for a player to take; he ought to sit facing the table with his hands in front of him. "Stranger than truth," said the Judge, and Bodney looked at him with a start. For a moment the game vanished and darkness fell upon the players, but soon a blue curtain was pulled aside, a black face, grim, without a smile, showed glistering behind the glass, the door was opened, and there again were the players in the light, the offensive fellow drawing one card, the regular solemn and confident with a hand that was pat. "Stranger than the strangest truth that I have ever encountered," the Judge went on, turning his back to the table and looking over Bodney's head at something on the wall. "But I brood too much."
"One card," said Bodney, in a thick muse.